


nothing counts but tomorrow’s game

by maranhig



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Established Relationship, Fluff, Gratuitous Baseball, M/M, Pre-Season/Series 04, Team Family Feels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-29
Updated: 2015-07-29
Packaged: 2018-04-11 21:29:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,528
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4453055
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maranhig/pseuds/maranhig
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“c’mon, don’t think too hard about it,” rick murmurs, and his smile is warm enough to melt the lump of ice that has coalesced in daryl’s chest. “after all, it’s just playing catch.” / in which team family rediscovers baseball and daryl and rick keep being adorable.</p><p>(this makes references to events that happen in <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/2203602">my brother’s blood in my dirty lungs</a>, but can be read as a standalone.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	nothing counts but tomorrow’s game

**Author's Note:**

> i had promised [ thelongcon ](http://archiveofourown.org/users/rainer76) a baseball game, with daryl pitching and rick catching. consider this practice for the full-on [professional baseball AU](http://pistengyawa.tumblr.com/tagged/baseball-AU) i’m currently trying to grapple into coherency.  
> I’m so sorry if there are too many technical terms, you don’t really have to understand them. I just tried to make the gravity of certain situations clearer.  
> title paraphrased from what our hero roberto clemente said when he was grilled for a recap of the ballgame he just played: “why does everyone talk about the past? all that counts is tomorrow’s game.”

It’s Michonne’s idea to bring back the gear that’s been left in a warehouse to die. They are, in total, an unmarked blue cap, five worn mitts, three stuffed bases and a home plate, a Louisville Slugger with gray tape around the handle, and nine scuffed baseballs.

“They’ll fit in the backseat,” she tells you, eyes glittering. “But I’ll have you know I was the fastest runner in Little League. You’d better watch your back.”

The idea of Michonne as a wicker-sharp young girl gunning down the field would make you chuckle, except your stomach has clenched up and the feel of the stitches in your hand is such a foreign, once-upon-a-time memory. “We ain’t gonna need this shit. Not like food.”

Michonne’s face softens, and she says, “We might need it more than you think.”

You keep the ball in your hand when she drives the sedan back, relearning the proper grips, old knowledge rising like driftwood to the surface of your mind. You wonder if Rick still knows how to call pitches, if he still knows where to locate your fastball even crouched down and with the sun on his face.

The land outside is still battered from the tornado that passed last night, grass twisted and flattened, gaping bald patches on trees. A walker’s storm-carried torso hangs between the branches of an oak you pass by, its guts trailing to the ground, arms flailing. Everything impermanent has been blown away.

Rick is more than ecstatic, clapping his hands together once as though he can’t contain himself. “The walkers are still slowed up from that storm,” he says while seated on your bunk, flexing his fingers inside one of the mitts. “It won’t hurt to play out in the left field during the day. Carl, the kids, they’ll love it.”

The cover of night doesn’t permit you to see much in your cell, but his enthusiasm is almost a tangible thing, and quite confusing. “Dunno what all the fuss’s about,” you mumble while you pull off your boots. “S’ just playin catch.”

Rick puts the mitt back with its friends in the box Tyreese scrounged up, and touches your chest. You look up at him and he’s looking right back, a disarming scrim of fondness overlaying the deep river color of his eyes. “I’ll be doing it with you again. That gives me plenty to be excited about.”

You slant him a reluctant grin. “Sure your scrawny legs can stand to be catchin? Thought y’ only played in high school.”

“Well, I played through all four years of it, I still might know a thing or two.” Rick kisses you slow, tongue tracing your lips, then pulls away. “Now come to bed. We have baseball tomorrow.”

More people than you’re expecting come to watch the next afternoon, blankets over their heads to protect them from the sideways-slanted light, your long shadows cutting across the field. To everyone’s surprise, Dr. S offers to play at first base when Hershel asks for anyone willing to join the game. Maggie is at second while Tyreese is at third, and Glenn becomes the shortstop. You’d crack ten million jokes about how fitting this is because shortstops are always _short_ , but you’re sizzling in your skin and you don’t know if this is a good or bad thing yet.

You wonder, idle and sudden, what would have happened if you’d stayed in high school long enough to get yourself on the varsity team, if your pitching could have been good enough for scouts to scoop you far away from old man Dixon. You could have been pitching for the Braves, and made enough money that you could track down the boy who had made you fall in love with the game (and him) in the first place. You could even have been throwing to Rick himself, if he’d depended on baseball like you did, you could have been his batterymate, have him be the first thing you see come morning and the thing you shut your eyes to at night, right until the end of the world.

It’s a lot of _could haves_ , a lot of fanciful dreams, but they don’t matter one whit because your most important dream is standing before you here and now, beaming at you with a ball in one hand and a mitt on the other. “Ready to strike them all out?” he asks.

“Best pray I don’t bean ya in the face,” you snipe, so scared of ruining this perfect day, and he sees that, of course he does.

Rick puts his arm around your shoulders, tips his head towards yours, which he’s never done in public before, and you blink at him, part lovesick and part mortified. “C’mon, don’t think too hard about it,” he murmurs, and his smile is warm enough to melt the lump of ice that has coalesced in your chest. “After all, it’s just playing catch.”

“Can you guys quit being sappy so we can play already?” Carl hoots from behind home plate, earning some titters from the audience. You smirk at him, and palm Rick’s stomach briefly before heading to the designated pitcher’s spot, relishing the mock-gagging noises the boy makes.

Beth’s Zach is the first one up, and he’s taken out in three straight pitches, and he laughs it off, promising, “I’ll get it next time.” Ryan comes up next, his daughters cheering him on. You think about going easy on the guy, hanging up your slider so it’s ripe for drilling out of sight, but decide against that. He makes contact with the ball anyway, fair and square, though Dr. S snags it out of the air before he can reach first base. Mika jumps to hug her father while Lizzie attacks his back, a larger-than-life hero in their mind no mater what, and that’s enough.

Michonne steps up for the third out, and calls with a cheeky grin, “Don’t you dare think about going easy on me, punk,” and behind her Rick grins, mouths _wanna show off?_

He signs for the changeup, and you hesitate long enough that the ball slips and though it meets Rick’s glove, Carl doesn’t call it a strike. Damn that kid for being as obsessed with the game as his dad is. But the last thing you should do right now is let him down.

Because this isn’t about normalcy. You can still see the people on watch in the guard towers, the walkers pressing themselves against your gates. This is a breath of fresh air, a quiet moment in a ceaselessly ringing world. This is giving your boys a chance to smile.

You throw a no-nonsense fastball next, then a curve, grateful when both stick. Your shoulder’s starting to ache, but in a good lowdown way that signifies muscles reawakening. And finally, finally, you throw a changeup that seems to defy time itself, and Michonne swings too early and strikes out.

Carl hollers, “You’re out!” with his eyes huge and flooded with amazement, and Michonne laughs, flips the bat for Hershel to catch.

“Not bad for a rookie,” she says, too proud to be annoyed. Rick stands up from his crouch to stretch out his sore legs, but smiling moronically down at the ground.

A different set of eager people take position, so you and he get to sit near Carol while she shades a sleeping Judith. Rick is clasping his daughter’s foot but he addresses you when he says, “I can’t believe I forgot how brilliant you are.” Your face heats up so badly you have to grab the blue cap off his head so its shadow hides your blush.

Zach’s pitching now, and though the ball sails neatly into Sasha’s glove, Glenn contest the call immediately, telling Carl, “Dude, that ball was _in_ ,” sounding so much like the kid you first met in Atlanta that you have to snort in amusement.

Rick appreciates it as much as you do, saying, “I’ve never seen them this happy in a long time.” He’s talking about Maggie fondly kissing Glenn to get him to shut up, and Michonne leaping to rob Dr. S of a base hit, and Carl yelling steee-rike in that old timer way.

Then Tyreese whacks a ball far enough that it shoots out of reach to the very edge of the inner gate, and Karen whoops herself hoarse, waving him around the bases to complete his solo home run as his sister curses him for not being on the same team as her.

Rick isn’t too bummed out when Michonne suddenly finds the holes in your pitches and attacks them with veracity until your team loses three to one. “We have tomorrow’s game,” he says, ruffling Carl’s hair when he won’t stop sulking. “We’ll always have tomorrow’s game.”

That cheers Carl up a bit, but you, right now, you must’ve gotten tunnel vision, because all you care about is the tired but satiated slump of Rick’s body, the calm in his eyes. And if you can’t help dropping a kiss into his hair on the way back to your cell block, neither he nor anyone else minds.


End file.
